Appointed by the British in 1921 to the newly created position of grand mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini emerged in the following years as the leader of the Palestinian national movement, and strongly opposed any compromise with Zionism or the Zionists. He encouraged the anti-Jewish riots and massacres of the 1930s, and, as is well known, met with Hitler and collaborated with the Nazis during World War II. After the 1948 war, it was long assumed, he faded from prominence, but recently declassified CIA documents suggest otherwise. Sean Durns writes:

In October 1951, U.S. intelligence warned of a “possible terrorist campaign” by Husseini, “who has the combined forces of the [Muslim] Brotherhood and his own terrorist organization” targeting British nationals in four Arab countries, as well as the “property and personnel of the trans-Arabian pipeline.” The mufti enjoyed close relations with the Brotherhood, which used his “spacious home in Jerusalem” for their “Palestine headquarters.”

U.S. intelligence managed to capture correspondence showing that the mufti was regularly briefed on terrorist activities, and had operatives traversing the Middle East. As late as 1962, he was still plotting to assassinate opponents. And, as late as 1965, the CIA was warning that Husseini “has instructed key followers” in Jordan to “reactivate” old units for attacks against Israel. The agency noted that the mufti was even purchasing “arms and ammunition” that were “remnants of the 1948” conflict.

By 1967, Husseini had reached a détente with King Hussein’s Jordan, which even allowed him to visit Jerusalem shortly before the Six-Day War, hoping that the mufti would help counter Egypt’s President Gamal Abdel Nasser and the then-Egyptian-controlled Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Amazingly enough, the mufti even fed intelligence to Hussein—the man whose grandfather he had had murdered—about Yasir Arafat, a distant cousin of Husseini, whom he formally anointed as his successor following a December 29, 1968 meeting near Beirut.

By the time of his death in Beirut on July 4, 1974, the mufti’s legacy was secure. Arafat would similarly play Arab regimes against each other and make war on the Jewish state. A mosque financed by Husseini and German ex-Nazis has, in recent years, been linked to Islamist terror groups like al-Qaeda. And much of the rhetoric employed by Husseini—such as comparing Zionists to Nazis—remains common today.

In a recent article, the New York Times Magazine asserts that Benjamin Netanyahu “prolonged the war in Gaza to stay in power.” Niranjan Shankar takes the argument apart piece by piece, showing that for all its careful research, it fails to back up its basic claims. For instance: the article implies that Netanyahu torpedoed a three-point cease-fire proposal supported by the Biden administration in the spring of last year:

First of all, it’s crucial to note that Biden’s supposed “three-point plan” announced in May 2024 was originally an Israeli proposal. Of course, there was some back-and-forth and disagreement over how the Biden administration presented this initially, as Biden failed to emphasize that according to the three-point framework, a permanent cease-fire was conditional on Hamas releasing all of the hostages and stepping down. Regardless, the piece fails to mention that it was Hamas in June 2024 that rejected this framework!

It wasn’t until July 2024 that Hamas made its major concession—dropping its demand that Israel commit up front to a full end to the war, as opposed to doing so at a later stage of cease-fire/negotiations. Even then, U.S. negotiators admitted that both sides were still far from agreeing on a deal.

Even when the Times raises more credible criticisms of Israel—like when it brings up the IDF’s strategy of conducting raids rather than holding territory in the first stage of the war—it offers them in what seems like bad faith:

[W]ould the New York Times prefer that Israel instead started with a massive ground campaign with a “clear-hold-build” strategy from the get-go? Of course, if Israel had done this, there would have been endless criticism, especially under the Biden administration. But when Israel instead tried the “raid-and-clear” strategy, it gets blamed for deliberately dragging the war on.